Reflective Teaching Tools Evaluation

Reflective Teaching Tools Evaluation

The agenda item at the staff meeting led to productive discussion and the handout was instrumental in taking this forward. The principal/headteacher has asked you to produce a paper for a management meeting so that managers can develop an institutional strategy. The paper needs to:

a) Evaluate different tools for use in reflective teaching
More than 4 tools( 5 is enough) for use in reflective teaching are clearly evaluated in detail with more than 4 ( 5 is enough) supportive evidence

b) Analyze the importance of feedback and data collected from different sources to inform reflective practice
The importance of feedback and data collated to inform reflective practice is analyzed in detail with more than 4 ( 5 is enough) benefits and drawbacks

c) Discuss forward-looking reflective teaching
A clear discussion on forward-looking reflective teaching is presented in a structured manner. the information is sufficiently detailed and understandable

Reflective Teaching Tools Evaluation Sample Paper

Reflective teaching is a self-observation and self-evaluation of a teaching practice, where teachers assess their pedagogy, writes strengths and reasons for their teaching strategies, and determines areas for improvement or revision. It is, therefore, a professional development process that starts in the classrooms, where teachers collect information about what happens in the classrooms and analyses this information. The introduction of critical thinking in classroom instruction helps students to experience various opportunities that essentially develop their capacity to process the information on higher thinking levels (Gregson et al., 2020).

Reflection is an important procedure that educators can use to examine their teaching practices and improve them according to the needs of the students. Teachers create their lesson plans around problems, case studies, and questions that encourage critical thinking. Teachers also use reflective teaching tools to specifically focus the curriculum on specific skills intended to be achieved by the students. In this way, learners can have clear and measurable objectives to achieve. They complete class activities and answer questions basing on the objective that is the focus (Latifa, 2016). And hence to reflect on the learning and teaching process, there are various reflective tools that teachers can use to collect reliable information, and they include teacher diary, students’ feedback, peer observation, audio recording, and teaching portfolio.

Different Tools for use in Reflective Teaching

Teachers’ Diary

A teacher diary is an important reflective tool that teachers can use to improve the teaching and learning environment. To come up with a diary, educators write about what takes place in the classroom after every lesson (Ashwin et al., 2020). Diary writing by teachers requires a certain discipline of continuously writing it up daily; however, all the experiences in the diary help them to understand themselves, their learners, and, more importantly, their working environment.  The benefits of using teachers’ diary as a reflective teaching tool are that it enables teachers to beware of their strengths and weakness in their teaching practice. In addition, it helps teachers to think productively in their teaching profession.  The disadvantage of using the teachers’ diary is that there is the possibility of briefness in writing, which sometimes makes it hard to interpret (Mitchell, 2017).

Peer observation

Peer observation is the other reflective tool that is useful in producing effective reflective teachers. Regular observation of educators by their colleagues can help to determine the areas that require attention. Also, it can be utilized to allow teachers or educators to share their teaching and learning approaches. To gain from the peer examination, teachers request their colleagues to attend their classes and gather information or data about their lessons.  And this may be through using note-taking or simple observation tasks (Latifa, 2016).  The benefit of using peer observation as a reflective teaching tool is that it improves the understanding of the personal approaches of delivering the curriculum.  It also improves the teaching styles or techniques of presentation and refines the interpersonal skills. The disadvantage of using peer observation as a reflective teaching tool is that some teachers and colleagues participate in peer observation just because it is an obligation and not to re-examine their teaching practice.  Again, once teachers or instructors get into the teaching schedule, it is hard to get time to do the classroom observation of the others.

Lesson recording

Audio or video recordings of the lessons can offer very vital information for reflective teaching. Recording what takes place in the class helps teachers to know aspects of their behavior as well as those of the learners.  Lesson recording provides teachers with the ability to identify certain class participation aspects and their teaching styles. Additionally, it improves the learning experience of the learners since it helps those learners who did not attend the class or who did not grasp the concept well. The disadvantage of lesson recording is that some learners may skip the classes since they know they will get the lessons through audio or videos.

The other important reflective tool for reflective teaching is Students’ feedback. It is a tool that is used in determining the perceptions and opinions of the learners about the teaching and learning methods, and it can be collected through administering questionnaires. Student feedback helps teachers to test their level of knowledge (Mitchell, 2017).  The limitation of this tool is that if the same questions are used in the next assessment, there may be evidence that the same answers will be in still in circulation.

The Importance of Feedback and Data Collected from Different Sources

Collecting the feedback of the peers, practitioners, students, and teachers on the teaching approach is normally used in education environments as a performance and an improvement tool. Providing frequent feedback about teaching is an important method of enhancing achievement in learning. It entails the provision of the information or data about aspects of performance and understanding. The various sources of this information are peers, practitioners, students, and teachers themselves (Mitchell, 2017). The importance of the feedback is that it determines the level of understanding of the students, and hence it helps teachers to plan and improve the next teaching steps towards attaining the learning goals.  The feedback of the peers, practitioners, and students is important because it informs the teachers about their teaching approach effectiveness. Therefore it makes teachers understand their strengths and weakness and exceptional challenges that face their students.

Forward-looking Reflective Teaching is a method of teaching that focuses on both pre-teaching and teaching phases to collect information and examine it to generate better outcomes in the post-teaching phase.  Forward-looking Reflective teaching contains checklists that are used by teachers to improve the learning outcomes of the students. The forward reflective teaching checklists function well if it is used regularly, starting from one class every day to another class little by little (Mitchell, 2017). Teachers prepare actions to plan to improve the activities or learning practices of the next classes using the forward-looking Reflective teaching checklist. The checklist serves as a roadmap of the teachers’ professional development or growth and, more importantly, improves the learning of the students.  Some of the examples of forwarding reflective teaching questions checklist involve: how well teachers planned for their lesson, whether they designed good practices and tasks for their students, and how they treated errors made by their students.

Reflective teaching plays a crucial role in developing the professionalism of the teachers, and therefore educators need to reflect on their teaching methods. It is important, however, to note that it does not matter the kind of reflective tools that are utilized by the teachers in performing their teaching practice reflection since they all have weaknesses and strengths.

References

Ashwin, P., Boud, D., Calkins, S., Coate, K., Hallett, F., Light, G., … & McCune, V. (2020). Reflective teaching in higher education. Bloomsbury Academic.

Gregson, M., Duncan, S., Brosnan, K., Derrick, J., Husband, G., Nixon, L., & Jones, R. W.  (2020). Reflective teaching in further, adult and vocational education. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Latifa, I. S. (2016, November). The Analysis of Teachers’ Lesson Plan Through Behavioural Objectives Theory. In Ninth International Conference on Applied Linguistics   (CONAPLIN 9). Atlantis Press.

Mitchell, D. (2017). ‘Curriculum making,’ teacher and learner identities in changing times. Geography, 102, 99-103.